Floor coverings and ground coverings, both permanent and temporary tiles, are well known. For example U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,438,312, 4,436,779, 4,054,987, 5,791,114, 6,026,625 and 6,098,354 are of interest and are incorporated herein by this reference.
Interlocking floor tiles, of the type that are typically installed on top of an existing floor, have traditionally required installation by placing one tile down on the floor after the other and interlocking the respective tiles through some type of interlocking system. When the tiles need to be removed, even temporarily, the tiles have traditionally been required to be disassembled one tile at a time. This is, of course, time consuming and very inefficient, particularly where the floor tiles are to be reinstalled in a short period of time.
While tile of these prior types have been generally useful for their intended purpose, the need remains in the art for a floor tile system will that assemble into a unitary and structurally stable floor covering, which can be rolled up, either in whole or in part, rather than requiring that the multi-tile floor be disassembled into its plurality of individual tile.